
Maybe you've noticed, for the last few days some google ads appeared on this blog, but they have disappeared now again. That's because I just got banned from google adsense for life time (as it seems), although I didn't do anything wrong. Here is the story:
This blog and the related other websites are getting more popular every month and generating more and more traffic. So I thought it would be a good idea to place some few non-disturbing ads on the page to get in the costs of the webservers again. So I did this and after two weeks it looked like it worked out: The statistics at adsense told me I would get some very small amount of money out of it, enough to pay my costs.
Then in the beginning of this week, I released a new version of some free software (
irrKlang 0.5) I am working on in my spare time and this generated some attention: Several game development pages and blogs linked to my website, increasing its traffic. The next morning, I received a mail from google, telling me that my account was suspended and on their site it reads that I'll never be able to do business with google again, because of invalid clicks on my ads.
WTF.
In that mail, they did not even tell me any information about their problem with my ads, only "invalid clicks or page impressions". No IP adresses, no channel ID, no website, no time or date, no amount of clicks, nothing. No way for me to find out what was wrong. There was the possibility to contradict, and I tried to explain some possible causes like the sudden increased amount of traffic, but they ignored me. The interesting thing: They now even won't pay out the money I already earned before the occurance of their 'invalid clicks' assert.
So from one day to the other, google completely locked me out of their program and are witholding all my money, without telling me why, no possibility to defend myself, being sure that I didn't do anything wrong. And lets assume: Even if for example some east asian click fraud company clicked a thousands of times on my ads (which I've read is today a standard way of companies getting rid of their competition), why the hell are they punishing ME for this?
Do no evil? Sure, but it seems this is only valid if it hasn't to do anything with money.
I'm going to use some alternative ad providers now, if I find some good ones usable in Europe/Austria.
Update: A bit more than a week later, google sent me a mail, apologizing for the trouble and unlocked my account again.
Details here.
i guess that's how big companies make money today...